Finn Grimwood writes:
After a tough couple of weeks of selection, Cantabrigian’s top men’s eight raced in IM1 last weekend at Marlow Regatta, the last of the big races before Henley Royal Regatta. We were excited to test our speed in the Henley crew line-up especially as Marlow’s format of time trials followed by ranked finals always produces close racing.
The result of the time trial was a good start, coming 9th of the 24 IM1 crews. Our time placed us just 3 seconds behind the winning crew and just 1.7s off the A Final in what proved to be a very tightly packed field.
Securing our place in the top end of the B Final gave us confidence that we’d be able to fight for a victory, but a poor start in the race gave the field the jump on us in the first few hundred metres. After settling into a race rhythm it became pretty clear that we had work to do if we really wanted to show our speed. Fortunately, a push into the half-way mark brought us back into the pack and a second move saw us fighting with London Rowing Club for the lead. Ultimately, we weren’t able to fully recover from our slow start and – after a very tiring race – we ended up in second, a third of a length behind London.
Despite this, the results we achieved were promising and put us in a competitive position for Henley Royal. The icing on the cake was provided by the Henley stewards on Sunday evening when they decided our results from the season were good enough to pre-qualify us for the Thames Challenge Cup.
Congratulations to all involved at Marlow, and good luck to them for Henley!
